The timing and
intent of Pope Benedict XVI’s call for a “New Evangelization” have as much to
do with his theological and pastoral pedigree as they do with the state of
affairs in which the Church lives. His early contributions to the topics of
revelation, human history, and the relation between the two—which brought the
young Joseph Ratzinger both praise and charges of championing “dangerous
modernism”—today assist the Church in engaging modern ills with the enduring
truths of the Gospel.
Of course, with a
mind as expansive as Pope Benedict’s, no one event, or even a series of them,
can be said to be “the” development that defines him. Certainly, his upbringing
in Catholic Bavaria, his forced participation in World War II as a teenager, and
his days among bomb-damaged seminary buildings studying St. Augustine, Henri de
Lubac, Romano Guardini, Martin Buber, and so many others all influenced who the
man is today. Still, not every encounter with the past has equal influence.
Joachim of Fiore, St. Bonaventure, and salvation history
In the mid-1950s, Father
Joseph Ratzinger began work on his second doctoral thesis—a standard
requirement of the German theological academy. The study would introduce him to
a dramatic moment in Church history, when rumors of the world’s end and the
coming of a new age clashed with Christian orthodoxy. The players in this drama
were Joachim of Fiore, an eccentric 12th-century Italian abbot; St.
Bonaventure, a 13th-century leader of the Franciscan Order; and an overly
idealistic group of Franciscans known as Spiritualists.
Ratzinger concluded
that Joachim, Bonaventure, and the events of the 13th century brought to the
Church a “new theory of scriptural exegesis which emphasizes the historical
character” of Scripture. This new theory was, notably, “in contrast to the
exegesis of the Fathers and the Scholastics which had been more clearly
directed to the unchangeable and the enduring.” In finding value in such a
view, Ratzinger aligned himself with a school of theologians that sought fresh
approaches to orthodox Christian theology.
Evidence for this
new view of revelation came from available notes from lectures by Bonaventure
given in response to the followers of Joachim, the mystic whose writings had
enthralled a troubled Europe. This attraction came, in large part, from how
Joachim wove worldly activity into salvation history, and the particular way in
which he structured this interplay with biblically-inspired numerical schemes.
For instance,
Joachim’s numerology broke ranks with a long-held Augustinian view of time that
divided world history into seven ages. For Augustine, these seven ages
corresponded to the six days of creation—with the cosmic clock now ticking in
the sixth age (which dawned on the first Easter) while moving towards the
seventh age (which would bring the eternal Sabbath rest).
Joachim saw history
in a Trinitarian light, which encouraged his readers to envision an age of the
Father, corresponding to the Old Testament; an age of the Son, corresponding
with the New Testament; and a yet-to-come new age of the Holy Spirit, which
would complete the process of revelation. For some of Joachim’s followers, this
new age would be one of spiritual awakening—of a new reality with no need of
the Cross.
Joachim’s death in
1202 and an ecclesial condemnation in 1215 didn’t diminish his following. Quite
the opposite occurred. Because Joachim seemed to imply that the year 1260 would
herald the Second Coming, soldiers, kings, and clerics of the age couldn’t help
but wonder if the world was indeed ending. Were Muslim invasions signs of the
Apocalypse? Were the growing mendicant orders proof that God was preparing a
people for the eschaton? And if so, how should one respond to—or work to bring
about—this coming of a new age?
With this
heightened expectancy, and for reasons related to Trinitarian dogma, 13th-century
theologians denounced Joachim’s writings. But for some Franciscans, Joachim had
merely stated the obvious: History as it had been known since the time of the
Apostles had come to an end with the coming of Francis. Joachimist elements
within the Franciscans became known as the Spiritualists, and they found
themselves at odds with just about everyone else in their order and the Church.
In 1257—three years
before what many thought would be the Second Coming—the deeply divided order
elected Bonaventure of Bagnoregio as their Minister General. In his new role,
Bonaventure was given the task of steering the entirety of his flock to
orthodoxy—which he accomplished. Indeed, as a pastor, he intervened with
sensitivity to the range of expressions and beliefs within the order. As a
leader entrusted to protect the work of his beloved Francis, he deftly
negotiated ecclesial suspicions and Spiritualist fervor by discarding what had
been condemned and retaining those elements of Joachim that had value. As
Ratzinger will demonstrate, Bonaventure found much in Joachim worth salvaging.
For instance, we
learn that Bonaventure employed a division of world-history that had
similarities to Joachim’s. Ratzinger found this particularly important because
in adopting some of what Joachim suggested, Bonaventure not only provided the
Spiritualists a road home, he also shifted Christianity’s theology of history
from an Augustinian view, which fixed Christ at “the end of the ages” to a new
interpretation with Christ firmly in “the center of the ages.”
Ratzinger tells us
that, thanks to Joachim, the placement of Christ at the midpoint of history
allows Bonaventure to emphasize the “historical character” of engaging Scripture
because, while all ages relate to the center, all ages are different. This is
where Ratzinger received criticism for holding a “dangerous modernism,” which
he writes about in his memoirs, Milestones.
The exact charge by one of his advisors—and supported by other theologians—was
this: In championing Bonaventure’s historical character of biblical exegesis,
Ratzinger would open the door to “the subjectivization of the concept of
revelation.” That is, the meaning of revelation would be reinterpreted by each
generation to the point of irrelevance to the human person.
This is, of course,
not what Ratzinger proposed, and after polite revisions and a heated battle
among his advisors, Ratzinger’s doctoral thesis on Bonaventure was accepted. He
was free to present his findings to the wider, ecclesial world.
For the future
pontiff, Bonaventure’s appreciation of Joachim’s dynamic theology of history
seemed an obvious reality for the medieval Church, and it should to us. By the 12th
century, it was clear that history had not been idly waiting for the Second
Coming, nor was the Church. History was in motion. It was unpredictable,
bloody, and brought to humanity new realities—some of them surprisingly
wonderful, but many replete with loneliness and desolation and, thus, always in
need of Christ.
At the end of his
thesis, Ratzinger makes a statement that may very well define his pontificate.
He notes that while for Bonaventure it is true that for now “the breath of a
new age is blowing, an age in which the desire for the glory of the other world
is shaped by a deep love of this earth on which we live,” what remains vital
for both Augustine and Bonaventure, irrespective of their differences, is the
pastoral exhortation that Christians must attend to the needs of the here and
now—“that the Church which hopes for peace in the future is, nonetheless, obliged
to love in the present.”
The unchanging Gospel and the New Evangelization
Thus, the central
reality of the Church is the point of contact between revelation and our
individual and communal moments of the
present. Joachim and his followers, however, offered a tempting, and false,
alternative path—one that still has its adherents. In the 1970s, Ratzinger
wrote in his opus on eschatology that “the hope aroused by Joachim’s teaching
was first taken up by a segment of the Franciscan Order, but subsequently
underwent increasing secularization until eventually it was turned into
political utopia. The goal of the utopian vision remained embedded in Western
consciousness, stimulating a quest for its own realization and preparing the
way for that interest in concrete utopias which has been such a determinative
element in political thought since the 19th century.”
This is not the
only reference to Joachim one finds in Ratzinger’s later writings. His work on
eschatology will return to Joachim, and many of his texts, talks, and homilies
will raise the specter of the paradise-is-in-our-reach worldview that
Joachimist thought unleashed.
To counter the
resulting Western hope for better living through chemistry, economics, and
political revolutions, Pope Benedict, like Bonaventure, offers Christ’s
unchanging Gospel of love. In Caritas in Veritate,
his third and most-recent encyclical to the Church, the Holy Father writes that
“[t]he Church’s social doctrine illuminates with an unchanging light the new
problems that are constantly emerging.”
Indeed, when one
examines Ratzinger’s post-Vatican II commentary on revelation or his pontifical
homilies and encyclicals, one repeatedly finds him insisting that the
unchanging light of Church doctrines—which participate in and shine forth from
the unchanging light of revelation—has the power to elevate whatever that the
Church encounters. For Benedict XVI, then, evangelization is what takes place
when revelation slips through history. Like a ship’s bow cutting the seas,
revelation lifts and aerates. It also divides, because revelation offers a
choice—it offers an encounter with a Person, and, should we wish, we need not
stay and get to know Him.
In announcing the
upcoming Year of Faith—which is inherently linked with New Evangelization—the
Holy Father notes that “[o]ne thing that will be of decisive importance in this
Year is retracing the history of our faith, marked as it is by the unfathomable
mystery of the interweaving of holiness and sin. While the former highlights
the great contribution that men and women have made to the growth and
development of the community through the witness of their lives, the latter
must provoke in each person a sincere and continuing work of conversion in
order to experience the mercy of the Father which is held out to everyone.”
In other words, the
call to New Evangelization is not a new reality for the Church. Rather, it
reminds the Church of its command from Christ to offer eternal truths, to
struggle and give witness to these truths, and, thus, to sacramentally embrace
the ills of any age with divine doctrines—and to do so not with idyllic plans
for a happy tomorrow, but with the Cross of sacrifice and by loving in the present.
Pope Benedict
repeatedly reminds us that Christian love, when authentic, is sacramental
because it offers transformative hope and meaning. Whether the Pontiff speaks
of eros and agape, global economics, or global ecologies, or he attempts to
shift the anthropological understanding of marriage, life, and death, he offers
what might be called sacramental social
doctrines—teachings that in themselves foster necessary shifts in what he
has called our inner attitudes. In
transforming these attitudes, people and cultures can live, love, work, buy,
and sell with a greater concern for their neighbors, their labor force, and
their ecosystems. In offering the Christian proclamation that God is love, men and women can grow to
understand that marriage is not a societal celebration of sentimental or
biological urges. Rather, marriage exists for reasons that transcend the happy
couple. It is meant for the conception, nurturing, and protection of future
generations, all in the particular, gender-inclusive bond of love between a
woman and a man. Reacquainting the modern world with such truths—and doing so
firmly and with charity—is one facet of New Evangelization.
What New
Evangelization is not, the Pontiff has expressed quite clearly, is the fruit of
human planning. It is not the ushering in of a new, worldly Christian
kingdom—the collapse of Christendom should have taught us this. And it is
certainly not a Joachimist fervor that denies the Cross, or ignores the will of
the God who mounted it. Indeed, the New Evangelization is a pastoral response
to a world that grew up Christian, learned about history as progress from
Joachimist worldviews, and now suffers angst without the life source of
Joachim’s original foundation—Jesus Christ. The New Evangelization is also a
reminder to many of the faithful, especially in the West, that the Church of
2050 will, outwardly, look unlike the Church of 1950.
In laying out his thoughts on New Evangelization in
2000, Cardinal Ratzinger speaks with Bonaventurian force when he teaches that
“[n]ew evangelization cannot mean: immediately attracting the large masses that
have distanced themselves from the Church by using new and more refined
methods. No—this is not what new evangelization promises. New
evangelization means: never being satisfied with the fact that from the grain
of mustard seed, the great tree of the Universal Church grew; never thinking
that the fact that different birds may find place among its branches can
suffice—rather, it means to dare, once again and with the humility of the small
grain, to leave up to God the when and how it will grow (Mark 4:26-29).”